The inventive concept relates generally to the programming of data in a semiconductor memory device. More particularly, the inventive concept relates to methods of programming a nonvolatile memory device.
Nonvolatile memory devices and memory systems including nonvolatile memory devices have become staple components in a wide variety of contemporary electronic devices including computers, cellular phones, PDAs, digital cameras, camcorders, voice recorders, MP3 players, handheld PCs, game machines, and televisions.
Nonvolatile memory devices include, as examples, mask read-only memory (MROM), programmable read-only memory (PROM), erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), and the like.
With an increase in a need for a large-capacity memory devices, multi-level cell (MLC) or multi-bit memory devices capable of storing multi-bit data per memory cell have become more common. It is essential to manage the threshold voltage distributions for MLC during program and read operations in order to maintain an acceptable level of data reliability.